Democrat candidates running for every level of government, from Kamala Harris on down, have made abortion the defining issue of their campaigns, insisting that Republican “extremism” on the issue will sway voters. But as Donald Trump correctly pointed out on the debate stage last week, Democrats, including Kamala Harris and especially her running mate Tim Walz, are the real abortion extremists.
Perhaps one of the most under-appreciated moments of last Tuesday’s clash between Trump and Harris was the former president’s willingness to go on offense against Democrats on abortion. Walz believes “abortion in the ninth month is absolutely fine,” Trump said at one point. “He also says execution after birth — it’s execution, no longer abortion because the baby is born — is OK.”
“Nowhere in America is a woman carrying a pregnancy to term and asking for an abortion,” Harris responded. “That’s not happening, that’s insulting to the women of America.” Unsurprisingly, the ABC moderators attempted to swoop in and save Harris with one of many bogus “fact checks” claiming that Trump was lying. “There is no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it is born,” moderator Linsey Davis stated.
But unfortunately for Harris, Davis, and unborn babies, Trump was correct, and there is no clearer example of that than Minnesota.
According to a report from The Daily Caller, “Twenty-four abortion procedures between 2015 and 2022 led to live births” in Minnesota. The record notes that seven of these babies were given “comfort care” but “no specific steps taken to preserve life were reported.”
In other words, the living, breathing babies were left to die.
Thanks to Tim Walz, that grotesque practice is completely legal. An omnibus bill Walz signed in 2023 made it legal for physicians to refuse life-saving care to infants born after failed abortions. (Also worth noting, as a congressman, Walz voted against a bill requiring doctors to provide life-saving care for “born alive” abortion survivors.)
Moreover, even that number may be a significant underestimate, as Walz also signed a bill eliminating a requirement that abortion providers report live births.
Another piece of legislation Walz signed in 2023 repealed Minnesota’s prohibition on clinics coercing women into having abortions, often through deception and scare tactics. As Dan McLaughlin put it for National Review, in the span of just a few years under Tim Walz, “Minnesota went from a pro-choice state to a radically pro-abortion state at the expense of pregnant women.”
And Minnesota is hardly alone. Nine states and Washington, D.C., currently have no gestational limit on abortion. As a result of bills like the one Walz signed, doctors can perform third-trimester abortions with no oversight or restrictions. If Democrats in D.C. have it their way, this same radical policy will go national.
As Trump also accurately noted during the debate, in 2019, former Virginia Governor Ralph Northam infamously defended extreme late-term abortions in a live radio interview, stating that during abortions in which the preborn baby is viable outside the womb, “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired, and then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.”
Northam’s comments came in support of a bill from Democrat state legislator Kathy Tran, who also admitted that her bill would allow extreme late-term abortions up until the moment of birth. It seems Walz is hardly alone in supporting this heinous practice.
As Trump also correctly pointed out, he has clearly stated his position on abortion, but Harris and most Democrats have refused to be straight with the public on the issue. Trump has pledged to leave legislating on abortion to the states as the Supreme Court outlined in the 2022 Dobbs decision, while also working to implement policies that encourage more mothers to choose life.
Harris, meanwhile, has repeatedly declined to say whether she supports any restrictions on the practice, instead hiding behind the favorite Democrat line of “reproductive freedom.” The debate moderators last week did ask Harris whether she supports any protections for unborn life but refused to follow up when the vice president offered yet another non-answer.
Yet Harris’s past actions and statements are instructive, as much as she now tries to appease her base while trying to avoid alienating the majority of Americans who support some protections for the unborn.
Earlier this year, for instance, The New York Times celebrated Harris’s visit to an abortion clinic as a “historic first.” Harris has also repeatedly called for the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits taxpayer funding of abortion.
During her failed 2020 presidential campaign, Harris declared that she would weaponize the Department of Justice to “pre-empt” pro-life state laws. As a senator, Harris voted against the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act and co-sponsored a bill that would’ve overridden state laws and allowed unrestricted abortion at any stage of pregnancy nationwide.
Despite all the fearmongering from the corporate media and left-wing activists, the facts suggest that it is Harris and her Democrat allies, not Trump and Republicans, that are far out of step with most voters on abortion.
Andrew Shirley is a veteran speechwriter and AMAC Newsline columnist. His commentary can be found on X at @AA_Shirley.
